Las Terrenas 2023: Good Fortune
Posted on February 8, 2023 2 Comments
POST 54: February 8, 2023
As soon as I woke up yesterday, our third morning in Las Terrenas, I threw open the door to the rooftop porch next to our bedroom and was greeted by the sight of a rainbow. This was no vague, “maybe I will get colorful or perhaps I’ll just fade away” rainbow: this was an “every ROY G BIV color clearly delineated, loud and proud” rainbow. I visually traced its arc from a clump of distant palm trees to a nearby house with a cool catwalk, and was actually annoyed by another rainbow’s feeble attempt to form above it. The intruder was pathetic and faded away, as it deserved.
I eventually skipped down the stairs–well, no, I didn’t literally skip because I am a total klutz (more on that in a few paragraphs), but mentally I was frolicking–and was greeted with not one, not two, but THREE additional good omens: someone else had already made coffee, my friend had awoken to the sound of turtledoves, and the infant gecko that had been squashed in the kitchen shutters apparently had come back to life.
Someone else making coffee is an obvious good thing. Waking to the sound of turtledoves: well, I wouldn’t know a turtledove’s coo from any other sweet chirping bird’s, but it sure sounded like a good omen. Recognizing the sound from her childhood in East Germany, Antje assured me that it was a positive sign.
Our friends Antje and Fritz flew down here with us on Saturday. When we left at 8:00 a.m., the temperature–without windchill, mind you–was -10 F. I refused to wear a coat, and running from our front door to the Lyft in just a sweater and jeans was painful. Thanks to frozen fuel and sparse ground crews in Boston, we missed our connecting flight through JFK and landed in Santo Domingo at 11:30 p.m. When I stepped out of the SDQ airport and into 80 degrees F with matching humidity, my sweater and jeans were painful for the exact opposite reasons they had been in Boston. NOT that I was complaining about the sweat trickling down my spine.
All of that was to explain who the heck Fritz and Antje are and that, in our gratitude for escaping the Arctic Blast of the Century, or whatever hyperbole the weather forecasters were using, we were highly attuned to signs of our good fortune. Including the Miracle of the Squashed Gecko.
Antje was closing the shutters between the kitchen and the outdoor eating area and I was behind her washing dishes when she screamed in exactly the same tone I would’ve used if I’d seen a snake. So, instead of asking whether she’d cut off a limb or was otherwise injured, I yelled, “Is it a snake? Did you see a snake?”
“No, it has legs,” Antje sputtered.
Reassured, I ventured outdoors to see her pointing at a gecko that was so young that its skin was nearly see-through. Unfortunately, it had been smushed in the shutters.
My husband had by this time run down the stairs from our bedroom. He’s not as klutzy as I am, and, being more empathetic, he was concerned for Antje’s physical well-being. Gabe rolled his eyes when he saw the dead gecko and suggested that we deal with the carcass, which was still attached to the shutter, later.
When we returned from dinner, the decidedly dead gecko was gone. Eaten by some other animal that climbed a good ways to get it? Never really there but just a figment of our collective imaginations? Resurrected? We were all going with the latter–which, incidentally, seemed to be the winner when we opened the shutters the yesterday morning and a baby gecko of the exact same size was smashed in the shutters again.
The rainbow, the turtledoves, the Miracle of the Squashed Gecko: good omens all, we thought. But then, on the way to the fresh juice shack, we met three young Estonians whose hotel room had been robbed. A mere hour later, I was in a pristine nail salon, searching for a blue-green that would make my toenails the color of the Sargasso Sea. As I was putting a not-quite-right color of polish back on the shelf, that bottle whacked into a bottle of black nail polish, which launched several feet into the air and shattered onto the ceramic floor, spraying broken glass and black nail polish on to the pale green walls, the white shelves, and the floor. I guess the good omen was that the woman getting a manicure nearby did not sustain any injuries or splatters. After many “disculpes,” which I said so many times that the Spanish for “excuse me” is permanently wedged into my brain, and a guilt-ridden pedicure, I gave Diana a 75% tip and fled in embarrassment as soon as the Ready, Fete, Go polish dried on my toenails.
“Well, I’m glad we didn’t play the lottery,” I reflected to myself on my way back to our villa. Because of the several seemingly good omens, the four of us had raised the possibility but quickly discarded it on the grounds that we aren’t gamblers and, given the language barrier, we might accidentally end up investing in a Ponzi scheme.
When I got back to the villa, I stretched out on the warm wooden deck and dangled my legs in the pool. I admired my newly painted toenails, then looked upward into the Shore is Something! blue sky, punctuated only by the leaves of several palm trees swaying in the wind.
Good omens, I realized, were beside the point. By the random luck of being born into a middle-class family in the United States, I had won the lottery of opportunity. Instead of looking for good omens, I should enjoy and appreciate the amazing good fortune that I have,
And I do, I assure you.
On Death and Gin Rickeys
Posted on February 2, 2023 2 Comments
POST 53: February 2, 2023
Several weeks ago, I seized the opportunity for a mid-week getaway to Manhattan, in desperate need of a break from the twenty-foot-high-dog-pee-and-car-exhaust-stained snow pile of misery that is greater Boston in the winter.
Like many zillions of NYC travelers before me, I entered the city full of naive optimism. That first afternoon and evening, I planned to:
- Make fabulous progress on a short story by writing for the entire train ride from Boston to New York;
- Walk the mile or so to my hotel, dragging my suitcase behind me, in 15 minutes through post-holiday, uncrowded steets;
- Eat a vegetable-filled salad for dinner (I smirked at the unlikeliness of meeting this goal, even as I set it);
- Return virtuously to my writing for the remainder of the evening;
- Go to bed at a sensible time, having completed a solid first draft of what is destined to become an award-winning piece of fiction.
Here’s what actually happened the first afternoon and evening of my jaunt to NYC:
- I listened to a podcast about overcoming the fear of death. Since facing mortality is a theme in my short story, listening to that podcast fell under the “writing” umbrella. How, you may ask, can one overcome a fear of dying? First, identify what specifically scares you. Fear of the pain of dying? Fear of leaving work undone, or words unsaid before you die? Fear of oblivion? If your (or, theoretically, my) death fear tends toward the oblivion thing, here are a couple of surprisingly effective ways to turn the tables on your devious brain:
- The human mind is uniquely constructed to be self-aware, so remind your mind that it will not be aware of its own oblivion when you die.
- I visualize a black, blank page on the left, where there is no me in the universe before birth. Next to it is a running stick figure in a white space, which is me alive in the universe and which represents the extent of my artistic skills (or lack thereof). Finally, there’s another black, blank page to the right, which is no me in the universe after death. Easy peasy, right?
- I downloaded the audio version of Malachy McCourt’s book Death Need Not Be Fatal (again, research for short story = writing time). In addition to being the brother of Angela’s Ashes author Frank McCourt, Malachy is an “Irish bon vivant,” an author, a former candidate for governor of New York, and a gold smuggler, among other things. And he’s wickedly funny. Death Need Not Be Fatal, though a bit rambly (hey, the guy was in his mid-80s when he wrote the book), is worth reading if you appreciate looking at tragedy and loss through the lens of humor to help make it more bearable. Which I do.
- I looked out the window between Mystic and somewhere between Stamford and Greenwich, CT. Lovely views of the ocean from the left side of the southbound train. Southbound trains and mournful winter waves got me thinking about dying. Again.
- I walked briskly the mile or so from the train station to my hotel! Yay, me!
- I plugged in my computer and connected to the hotel’s internet. I was all set to write–really, I swear–when my travel companion decided he had to take a work call at 6:30 p.m. Obviously, we couldn’t both work in the room, so I did what I always do when all else fails: I went to a bookstore. In this case, Bookoff (WTF does that even mean?!) on W. 45th Street. Despite its ridiculous and slightly lewd name, Bookoff is a treasure hunt for bibliophiles. I found four used paperbacks in very good condition for $4.36, I kid you not.
- I wandered over to Grand Central Station, then back towards Times Square. New York was much busier in mid-January than I’d anticipated. I’m glad that people are traveling again and businesses are making money from tourists again. I only wish that fewer of those tourists and business folks had their faces glued to their phones and therefore didn’t walk into me.
- Just as I was thinking I might keel over from starvation, I received an invitation to dinner. As enjoyable as that meal and company was for me, it will be super boring for you to read about, like if someone tries to describe a dream to you and you just want to scream and beg them to stop. So, I’ll move straight on to the interesting bit after dinner, when we went to a bar called The Rickey.
You know how many bars connected to hotels are kind of sad and look like they were last re-decorated in 1985? This one definitely was not like that. The Rickey, attached to Dream Midtown, is romantically dark, cozy, and green velvety: perfect for a January night. I had an original Gin Rickey, an odd choice for a January night, but I was thirsty and it sounded quenching.
The Gin Rickey, I discovered later, has an interesting history, and, yes, I’m adding a bar scene into my story so that my rickey research counts as writing time. Colonel Joe Rickey, a well-known Democratic mover and shaker in post-Civil War Washington, D.C., walked into his favorite bar, a dive known as “Shoo’s,” one hot summer day in 1883 and requested a drink made of rye whiskey, lime juice, and seltzer water on the rocks. Gin soon became the liquor of choice, and remains so in the Rickey we enjoy today, although bartenders are always concocting variations on the classic.
As for Colonel Joe Rickey, he loved Shoomaker’s so much that he bought the bar in the 1890s. Sadly, the Colonel took his own life in 1903 when, at age 61, he killed himself by drinking carbolic acid mixed with water.
In 2011, the Gin Rickey was named the official cocktail of Washington, D.C. I can attest that it tasted pretty darn good in NYC as well.
Fun fact: When I looked up New York’s official cocktail, fully expecting it to be a Manhattan, I learned that, while the city has none, the official beverage of New York State is—milk! Umm, that was definitely NOT what I expected.
I thought about death a few times as I walked, and walked, and walked all over Manhattan the next day. Leafless trees, steely skies, and listening to a few more chapters of Death Need Not Be Fatal kept mortality front and center.
I also thought about Gin Rickeys again the next night at The Rickey, but decided to order a more seasonally appropriate espresso martini instead.
Sicily #5: Was Our Trip Like White Lotus Season 2?
Posted on January 4, 2023 2 Comments
POST 52: January 4, 2023
A couple of nights ago, my husband and I binge-watched the final three episodes of White Lotus, Season 2 (a.k.a. “the one in Sicily with murder, drugs, staggering quantities of booze, and an abundance of straight/gay/bi/married/extramarital/with prostitutes/two-person/three-person sex”).
As the final credits rolled, Gabe commented, “That was nothing like our trip to Sicily.” I couldn’t tell whether he was disappointed or relieved. I decided not to ask.
But, to answer the question posed in the title of this post: Solid no.
Had we made a reality show out of our trip to southeastern Sicily last September, it would’ve been a real snoozer. Christina and Gabe Drink Organic Sicilian Wine! Christina Makes Friends with Yet Another Stray Cat! The Sun Continues to Rise/Set in an Amazing/Stunning/Mind-Blowing Manner!
Or, for our mystery-loving viewers: Will the A/C at the Lovely Hotel with the Juliet Balcony Be Repaired in Time for a Good Night’s Sleep? Will Christina Ever Stop Complaining About Biking Uphill? Is Ricotta Actually a Cheese?
The answer to that last question also is a solid no, despite what the manufacturers of even Italian-sounding ricotta brands proclaim on their containers. Ricotta is a re-heated (hence, the word “ricotta”) whey by-product of cheesemaking. Italians eat it both hot and cold, sweetened and unsweetened.
The most shocking thing I learned about ricotta is that a person can actually get tired of eating it. I adore ricotta–oops, I almost wrote “ricotta cheese” but didn’t we just cover the fact that ricotta is not a type of cheese?–and figured I’d be dining on ricotta and pasta in any format 24/7 while in Sicily. After all, when I worked at a gelato shop during college, everyone told me I’d get sick of sampling the goods and that never happened. Ricotta, though: as fresh and delicious as it was in Sicily, I–or at least my middle-aged digestive system–cried uncle around day four of 10.
Our hypothetical mystery-loving fans might also have appreciated one of my favorite aspects of Sicily: the surprises waiting around every corner. Never knowing what I’d find as I explored both sanctioned and not-exactly-prohibited-but-definitely-off-the-beaten-path places was delicious. There was the Secret Sex Room at our hotel in Scicli. I mean, what on earth else would a room with a ladder, a bed, and a mirrored wall be used for? That room, incidentally, is about as White Lotusy as our trip got. Sorry for being so oooollld and boring, as our kids would say.
Speaking of old, but definitely not boring, there was the oldest chocolatier in Modica located at the back of a completely anonymous alley. Wait, what? I see from their web site that Antica Dolceria Bonajuto has a new limone verdello chocolate bar. Sicilian surprises: the gifts that keep on giving, even when we’re separated by 4,380 miles. Please hold while I place an online order. . .
. . . whew, chocolate is on its way.
Let’s explore another Sicilian delicacy: olives. The culture of olives is alluring. The trees are arboreal supermodels. And they’re useful as well as decorative, providing excellent shade under which to take an afternoon nap (not that I would know from personal experience). Some people even like the taste of the olive tree’s fruit, though a friend who tried one directly off the tree, in direct violation of what is apparently the #1 rule of olive consumption, said it was the bitterest thing she ever tried. As an olive aficionado, she couldn’t believe how, in her words, such a divine-tasting finished product could be so awful in its natural state.
During the course of biking one day, we came across an operational olive processing facility that was supposed to be closed. Another one of those Sicilian surprises: unless you’re catching a train or plane, posted hours of operation are highly fluid. This can lead to either disappointment or adventure, depending on your mindset. Watching the transformation of olives from bitter, inedible little ovoids into bitter, inedible processed ovoids was quite interesting.
Seriously, am I the only person alive who doesn’t appreciate the culinary appeal of olives, despite my deep appreciation for their cultural and aesthetic value? Or am I just, as my mother claims, a ridiculously picky eater?
Sicily is a place that engages all of the senses. It is a place suffused with a unique aura of melancholy and joy, a place that unsettled me in the pleasing way of a well-told ghost story. “Auramatic” keeps coming to mind, even though it doesn’t appear to be an actual, Merriam-Webster-sanctioned word.
My husband and the friends who accompanied us described our Sicilian biking trip as “magical.” I’m going with “auramatic” as the word that most effectively encapsulates my Sicilian experience. Technically, it’s a non-word, but that’s also perfect as, technically, I’m not a cyclist.
One thing’s for sure: by no stretch of anyone’s imagination could our Sicilian vacation be described as “White Lotus, Season 2.”
For which I, at least, am quite relieved.
Road School 